Agenda item

Joint report of the Town Clerk and Director of Community and Children’s Services.

Members received a joint report of the Town Clerk and the Director of Community and Children’s Services regarding the education workstream recommendations of the Tackling Racism Taskforce.

The Strategic Education and Skills Director began by providing a summary of the report, highlighting that while action is already being taken to tackle racism in the education providers it should not allow for complacency.

The Chair highlighted the three key recommendations surrounding diversity, education and engagement and invited Members to comment.

The following points were made:

• Clarity should be sought as to how to delegate these actions going forward, in order to achieve the recommendations.
• Success was reliant on the actions of the relevant governing bodies and as such, thought should be given as to how the Education Board could set principles and encourage other Boards to adopt these. It was suggested that a pledge or Schedule of Responsibilities could be considered.
• It was suggested that the Board should develop short, medium and long term action plans in relation to the recommendations.
• The terms ‘diversity’, ‘racism’ and ‘inclusion’ were felt to be too broad. Issues of racism vary between schools and more specificity of challenges, outcomes and time scales would help more useful recommendations of practice to be made.
• Some felt focus should be placed on the educational attainment of all students rather than the diversity of the student body.
• Regarding work experience, the Corporation should improve partnerships with companies that focus on increasing social mobility through work experience.
• Some felt focus should be placed on lifelong learning of alumni to the family of schools and how support can be offered throughout further education.
• It was felt that alumni networks could provide diversity, with some Boards having requirements for a number of Governors to represent the alumni.
• One Member felt that the alumni programme should be managed by each individual school to allow more effective use of and support to the alumni network.
• It was highlighted that the recommendations did not include the need for collaboration across the family of schools. It was felt that schools could greatly benefit from the learnings of others and that collaboration could result in more sustainable progress. A cross-school unit could be formed to address this.
• It was argued that school staff were better placed to suggest practical recommendations than governing bodies. Headteachers of City of London Academy Trust (CoLAT) schools had committed to analysing current practice within their schools and making recommendations to the Trust Board.
• It was highlighted that unfortunately some challenges are a result of societal issues which cannot be controlled by the Board, only mitigated.

RESOLVED, that the report be noted.